Posts Tagged ‘Squarcialupi Codex’

Also known as Antonio “Zacara” da Teramo, Antonius Zacharius of Teramo, Antonius Berardi, Andre de Teramo, Antonio Zacar, as well as Zacar, Zaccara, Zacharie, Zachara, and Cacharius. He’s also possibly the Zacharias that’s mentioned in the Old Hall manuscript (the largest collection of British Medieval and Renaissance music from the 14th and 15th centuries). There are two other people by a similar name, one, called Magister Zacharias, who was a papal singer around 1400, and the other, a Nicolas Zacharie (Niccolo Zaccaria), who was from Brindisi and was a papal singer from 1420-1434. Both of these Zacks also wrote music.

Our Zacara da Terama was part of the third generation of the trecento, along with Johannes Ciconia and Bartolomeo da Bologna. He was a composer, a singer, and a papal secretary and he was one of the most active Italian composers around 1400. His style bridged the major periods of the trecento, from ars subtilior (a French style of music in the 14th century) to the beginnings of the musical Renaissance.

He was probably born in Teramo in northern Abruzzo (Naples), not far from the Adriatic coast. He still owned property there and in Rome when he died.

His short stature earned him the nickname Zacara, which means a small thing of little value. He never used the moniker himself, but signed his name Antonio. It’s not too hard to understand why he didn’t use it and it’s too bad that he ended up recorded for posterity by it. He may have been small, but he offered the world considerable value.

The Squarcialupi Codex (compiled 1410-1415, and blog post to come) includes an illustration of Zacara. It shows him as short and with only ten digits total between his hands and feet. This is also mentioned in an entry about him in an 18th century necrology. Whether this was a birth defect or the result of an accident isn’t documented.

Nothing is known about Zacara until 1390 when he turned up as the teacher at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia Rome. He was not a young man at the time of this appointment, but his age isn’t listed.

In 1391, he became secretary to Pope Boniface IX (c1350-1404). The letter of his appointment survives and indicates that he was a married layman was well as a singer in the papal chapel. He stayed in the papal court through three papacies, until 1415. The Western Schism was going on, and letters from Zacara and some not-so-subtle subversive political references in his music tell us that he may have been involved in the politicking of the time. It’s not known exactly when he left his post with the popes, but one piece of his includes text that make it clear that he left before the council of Pisa in 1409.

During the papal schisms of the 1400s, the anti-popes in Italy (some were at Avignon in France, other were in Milan and Florence) couldn’t afford to hire many chapel singers from France and the Netherlands where the really good musicians lived, so they took advantage of the neighboring towns, which is how little Zacara came to be a chapel musician. He’s recorded as a singer in Anti-Pope John XXIII’s chapel in 1412 and 1413.

He appears to have been an active composer all his life, in two major phases. In the early phase, he used the forms of ballata, much like Jacopo da Bologna (fl.1340-1386) or Francesco Landini (c1325-1397). In his later period, possibly about the last 15 years or so of his life, when he was in Rome, there’s a clear ars subtilior influence.

Both sacred and secular vocal music survives. There are several paired Mass movements, Glorias and Credos, in a Bologna manuscript that was compiled after his lifetime. There are seven songs of his in the Squarcialupi Codex and 12 in another, called the Mancini Codex, compiled around 1410. Three of his songs are in various other sources. There’s a big difference in style between the works found in the Squarcialupi and the Mancini codices that probably represent when they were written. The Squarcialupi Codex shows influence from lyrical mid-century Italian composers, such as Landini. The Mancini pieces have a more mannerist style, like that of the ars subtilior.

He liked unusual texts with a mixture of languages and bizarre, even Satanic overtones. His “Rosetta” ballate was extremely popular both as the basis for parody Mass movements (for more on parody, see Bartolomeo da Bologna) by himself and others, and for highly ornamented keyboard arrangements.

All but one of his ten surviving secular pieces are ballate in Italian. That one piece is a caccia. In addition to his Mass movements, he also wrote one Latin ballade and one madrigal, both sacred forms.

Mass movements attributed to Zacara are based on secular pieces that are more confidently attributable to him. His Credo is found in manuscripts in both Modena and Bologna. The Bologna copy is simple music, and the Modena manuscript had lavish embellishments.

His Gloria movement contains remnants of the ars nova style (a mostly French style from the 1400s). What’s particularly interesting is that this piece supplies a link between Italian and English repertories, one that would later be called an “Italian influence.” See Alfonso Ferrabosco (1543-1588) and On Henry VIII’s MP3 Player. Probably the most widely distributed piece from the period, Zacara’s Gloria made it to Germany, England, and Poland. It offers more independent part writing (see Chords Versus Polyphony) than French works of the time, and has subtle rhythms.

His Mass movements influenced other composers of the early 15th century, including Johannes Ciconia (c1370-1412) and Bartolomeo da Bologna (fl1405-1427). Some of his innovations can be found in works by Guillaume Dufay (c1400-1474). He may have been the first to use upper-voice divisi (where a single voice part was split into two or more parts—there had to be multiple singers or instruments per part).

Zacara’s pieces are longer than most other 14th century Mass movements. They use imitation (where one part replicates the melody from another part) extensively as well as hocketing (where the voices produce chirps of sound, like organized hiccups, a style that was popular only for the 13th and 14th century). Pairing his Mass movements with his secular works may provide the link between less unified movements from other composers from that same century and the cyclic Masses that developed by the 15th century.

Two separate documents describe Zacara as already dead in 1416, so he probably died in 1415.

Sources:

“A Dictionary of Early Music, From Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

“Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997.

Also known as Paulo Tenorista and Magister Dominus Paulas Abbas de Florentia (as he’s called in the Squarcialupi Codex.)

Musically, Paolo da Firenza was conservative and progressive at the same time. He borrowed and combined musical practices from the past and the innovations of his own times, both Italian (old school) and French (new school). He had a distinctively rich and varied musical style. More music from ars nova period survives from Paolo than any other composer except Francesco Landini (c1325-1397), with whom he was friends.

It’s not known if Paulo was born in Florence, but he did live most of his life there, so it’s probable. His father’s name is thought to have been Marco and his family was poor. Paolo is thought to have had three brothers, but their names and what became of them isn’t known.

Paolo became a Benedictine monk around 1380 and his portrait in the Squarcialupi Codex shows him in a suitable black cassock. In 1401, he took the abbot position at Saint Martin al Pino and later became the rector of Orbetello, where he stayed until 1427. In around 1410, he supervised the compilation of the Squarcialupi Codex.

As abbot, he must have been a public figure, because in 1404, Paolo witnessed the signing of a document written at the cardinal’s house in Rome. The only other known date from his life comes from his madrigal Godi, Firenze, which celebrates the victory of Florence over Pisa in 1406.

Much of Paolo’s work is secular and all is vocal, although some of the attributions on Paolo’s ballate are erased in the source. All of his known output is for two or three voices, and through sources or stylistic elements, it’s all datable prior to 1410. Four of his vocal duets are credited to “Don Paolo,” and “P.A.” Is the composer of another 13 pieces.

He wrote three types of songs: 13 madrigals, more than 40 ballate, and two liturgical pieces. The three types of songs represent a sort of chronological journey. Paolo began with the traditional two-voice ballata but soon picked up the French fashion of three voices.

His use of the madrigal form—a third of his 30 surviving secular pieces are madrigals—is unusual at this time, when other forms had largely superseded it. His madrigals reveal a mixture of progressive and conservative elements, some with French influence (more on that in a minute). His two liturgical pieces combine an upper melodic line in the Italian manner with a cantus firmus. He also wrote at least one musical treatise.

His vocal duets use traditional forms and styles. One unusual feature is the provision of open and closed endings for the ritornelli of six madrigals; in one of these, the text doesn’t require repetition of the music (a ritornelli returns both in melody and text—the word means “return”). The same madrigal has open (doesn’t resolve to a satisfying ending) and closed endings (does resolve) in the first musical section (there’s an A and a B section). Earlier composers didn’t use these kinds of endings, although Lorenzo da Firenze and Jacopo da Bologna (fl 1340-c1386) used them in one piece each. It’s the number of times Paolo used these endings that’s unusual. The departure from common practice is less important, though, than the variety of rhythmic and melodic figures.

Paolo went beyond the two-part madrigal only once, in the three-voice Godi, Firenze when Florence defeated Pisa in a small war (remember, Italy was a collection of small city-states, much like Germany was at the time, each with their own rulers and armies). Perhaps the celebration that inspired him also encouraged him to leave his fuddy duddy ways behind.

Where his madrigals are conservative, his ballata are innovative, and he wrote more in the new style of three voices than for two. He was the first composer to do that in the case of the ballata. Of the 26 pieces concretely attributed to Paolo, only six are in two voices. Ten have the French disposition of solo cantus (chant-based melody line) with instrumental tenor and contratenor (higher voices sung against the chant melody), and ten have the hybrid form of vocal duet with instrumental contratenor. Three of these last also exist as vocal duets without a contratenor, but the three voice versions are probably the original.

Of his sacred music, the Benedicamus Domino is for two voices, and Gaudeamus omnes in Domino is for three voices.

With Landini and Andrea da Firenze (d. 1415), Paolo’s output marks the end of Florence’s dominance over Italian musical styles as musicians and their patrons moved to Milan, Venice, and Padua, and eventually on to Rome. Even Paolo spent the end of his life away from Florence.

Paolo’s ballate are the most modern of his works, being mostly for three voices, and all are lyrical, melodic and use some of the more extreme rhythmic intricacies of the ars subtilior school. Landini’s influence, which would have predominated Florence in the late 14th century, is evident in both the madrigals and the ballate.

Paolo was one of the supervisors who produced the musical anthology called the Squarcialupi Codex (blog post to come). Despite this, the 32 pages reserved for his works, with his portrait (in the black cassock of the Benedictine monk) on the first page and his name at the top of the rest, contain nothing but empty staves. Some think his music wasn’t yet available, although other sources suggest that he was simply away from Florence, attending to the needs of Cardinal Acciaiuoli (d. 1409) at the deadline.

Paolo’s unique style is evident in the sound of the music and in the notation that he used. He used Italian notation and its varied note shapes, mixed with notation of the French principles of mannered notation that introduced new (and needlessly) complex ways of expressing rhythmic patterns. His manuscripts combine Italian and French notation and show the influence of the Avignon mannerist school of ars subtilior in their rhythms, which are complex and intricate.

Using music notation was considered progressive in the 14th century, especially in Italy, and the proportional survival of Paolo’s secular to sacred music may be representative of a trend to document all music, not just sacred.

A resurgence of interest in the Renaissance in the 1970s translated Paolo’s work into modern notation, so it’s a lot easier for us to perform now.

His date of birth is estimated based on information in his will, written within a day or so of his death. When he resigned as abbot in 1433, he was approximately 78 years old. He died in Florence at the age of 81.

Sources:

“Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997.

“A Dictionary of Early Music; From the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome & Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.